With a frown, Reynold continued his search of the square chamber, but the bones appeared to be all that remained.
‘What is it? What are you setting aside down there?’ Ursula called, as if she expected Reynold and his squire to keep hidden valuables for themselves. Reynold shook his head at Peregrine in warning, but it was too late. His squire was already calling out the truth.
As Reynold suspected, Mistress Sexton soon appeared at the top of the pit, a horrified expression on her face. ‘Bones? You found bones?’ she accused, as though by unearthing the remains Reynold had called down some ancient curse upon Grim’s End.
But perhaps that was her fears talking. Dusting off his hands, Reynold made his way towards the sloped side in order to climb out, lest she be stricken with her malady. And, indeed, when he made it to the bank, she was pale and stiff.
‘You desecrated a grave,’ she said, with a gasp, and Reynold reached out to take her hands. He held her gaze, too, never wavering, as she drew one deep breath and then another.
‘What do you fear?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ she muttered, glancing away. ‘Everything.’
‘But this can’t be all that is hidden there,’ Ursula protested. She stared at the objects she had laid in the chest with a look of dismay that appeared to have little to do with the discovery of the bones.
‘What did you expect, the fabled Sexton hoard?’ Mistress Sexton asked, her scorn evident.
Although Reynold could not blame Mistress Sexton for her distress, he shared Ursula’s disappointment. The villagers had gone to a lot of work, expending all their energy and time on a huge undertaking that had yielded little. Reynold was not sure what he had hoped to find, but some riches would have helped Mistress Sexton and her people establish themselves elsewhere. Yet, like so much associated with Grim’s End, it seemed that the rumoured hoard was as insubstantial as the dragon itself.
‘But treasure lies below the grim,’ Ursula insisted. ‘That’s what your grandfather said.’
‘What?’ Mistress Sexton blanched and turned towards her attendant.
Ursula blinked, as though only now realising what she had just said. ‘Tis nothing, mistress, just another story.’
‘One you heard from my grandfather?’
Ursula took a step backwards and began wringing her hands. ‘’Twas something I overheard, mistress, probably just the ranting of a sick man.’
‘Sick? When was my grandfather sick, except when he lay dying…?’ Mistress Sexton’s expression grew fierce. ‘Ursula, you helped tend to him. What did you do?’
‘Nothing, mistress, I swear,’ Ursula said, obviously agitated. ‘Your mother bid me sit with him and to fetch her, if need be.’ Ursula paused to eye Mistress Sexton with entreaty. ‘He mumbled to himself. Most of it I could not understand, and I paid no heed, unless he asked for your mother. But one time, I was unsure, so I leaned close. He must have thought I was her, for he grabbed my arm with surprising strength.
‘“Remember the treasure is under the grim,” he said very clearly as he looked me right in the eye.’ Ursula shivered. ‘Then he fell back and I ran to get your mother.’
‘Why did you never tell me this?’ Mistress Sexton asked.
‘In truth, mistress, I forgot all about it,’ Ursula said. ‘When I found your mother, I told her, and she brushed it aside. She claimed that he said lots of things from the past that gave him comfort, but that I was not to worry. And so I dismissed it from my mind. It wasn’t until recently that I remembered it.’
‘So you are responsible for this,’ Mistress Sexton said, sweeping an arm to encompass the vast chasm that had been the mound.
‘No, mistress! I would never speak to Urban of such things,’ she said, with a sniff.
‘But you did tell someone.’ Mistress Sexton persisted.
‘Yes, but that was just in the course of relating old tales, after the fashion of my kinsman Gamel. His stories were mentioned, and I added this one, never thinking…’ Ursula trailed off, as though unable to go on. ‘But, then it doesn’t matter because that one is…dead.’
Mistress Sexton blanched again, and Reynold wondered whether this conversation was too much for her. And what was the point of it? No matter who told what to whom, the legends were just as fanciful as the dragon purported to be buried here, and the precious store of gold was nothing but a couple of coins possessed by the dead.
‘Peregrine, why don’t you take the women back to the hall, so that they can rest out of the sun?’ Reynold suggested.
The boy nodded, but Mistress Sexton reached out to touch Reynold’s arm. ‘You will rebury the bones, won’t you? And all that went with them?’
Her expression was so stark that Reynold was tempted to take her back to the manor himself. But he no longer trusted himself with her comfort, so he merely nodded. As Peregrine led the women away, Reynold stood watching until their figures disappeared behind a copse of trees.
Then he turned his attention to the gaping hole before him, one square sunk even deeper into the bowels of the skeleton of a ship, and he shook his head. It was the end of the road, for the hopes of the villagers, for the work that had kept them occupied, and for the time that they would spend in Grim’s End.
‘What are you going to do now?’ young Alec asked.
What else was there to do? Reynold frowned as he gazed out over the scarred earth. ‘We return everything to the ground, and then we fill it all in.’
Sabina slipped into her room, shut the door behind her and slumped against it. Weary and overwhelmed, she was eager for a few moments to herself. Ursula remained in the hall, which was just as well, for Sabina was not sure how she felt about her attendant’s revelation.
She could see that Lord de Burgh thought it nonsense, but he did not know all, and Sabina wondered whether she should tell him. Reluctant to disclose her father’s dying words to everyone, she had said nothing out by the mound. And what could it possibly matter? They had looked under the grim and found only the bones of the dead.
Sabina shivered. She tried not to dwell on the fact that they had desecrated a grave, but she couldn’t help it. Old fears returned, childhood notions that to disturb the mound was to rouse the dragon. Even though now Sabina knew that there was no worm and that no action had stirred it back to life, their troubles had started not long after someone else had wanted to defile the mound.
Sabina told herself that she should be glad that the dark suspicions she had refused to consider had at last been proven wrong. And yet, even now she hesitated to remember the moment she had tried so hard to forget—when her betrothed had returned.
Shaking, Sabina made her way to the room’s sole chair and sank down upon it, stifling a sob at all that had happened since. She dipped her head low, eager to bury her face in her hands, but a noise within the room made her look up. And as though her very thoughts had conjured him from the air, Julian Fabre stepped out of the shadows.
Sabina half-rose from her chair, a cry upon her lips, certain she had seen a ghost or some figment of her imagination that meant she was truly going mad.
‘Greetings, my love,’ he said, flashing a set of white teeth that anyone would envy. He had always been the handsomest man in the village, with his shock of dark hair and startling green eyes, and he had made the most of that beauty, using it to seduce and charm, to turn attention away from the ugliness hidden inside.
‘Struck speechless, are we? That has to be a first,’ Julian said, as he stepped closer. ‘Unlike most women, little Sabina always had her opinions and voiced them far too often.’
Sabina’s breath caught, and she felt panic press down upon her. Not now, she thought. Not now, when she needed all her wits about her. Staring at him, unblinking, she thought of Lord de Burgh and how he had steadied her only a little while ago.
‘Not much to say? Well, that’s fine because, for once, I’ll do the talking.’ Julian walked around the small space as though it couldn’t contain him, his intensity makin
g him unrecognisable to her as the boy she had once known.
‘I thought you lost your precious knight when the mound caved in,’ he said. He picked up her silver hairbrush as if it were suddenly of great interest to him, then glanced at her under his long lashes. ‘Thought I’d have to swoop in and take over.’
Sabina gasped.
‘Surprised? Oh, I keep an eye on what is mine—or I make sure Urban does.’
‘Urban!’ Sabina whispered, still unable to believe that her father’s loyal steward would work against the Sextons.
‘Yes. He is practically worthless, but I needed him to keep me informed while I remained out of sight,’ Julian said, as he roamed the chamber. ‘It was very accommodating of you to do all my work for me, though I don’t know if I should be insulted by your sudden change of heart. Why would you refuse to let me dig up the mound, only to help a stranger do so?’
Julian shook his head at her, as if in reproach. ‘I can only imagine that you have become more desperate over the past few months, for he cannot be more persuasive than I.’
Sabina simply stared at him, uncomprehending. He looked the same as he had when she’d last seen him all those months ago, but his clothes, obviously once fine, were frayed and worn, his hair too long and ragged.
‘Still quiet, I see. But now I really do need you to speak, for I see that your precious knight is filling in the mound,’ Julian said. He eyed her intently. ‘So where is the treasure?’
‘There is no treasure,’ Sabina said wearily. ‘Just as I told you before. There was nothing in that mound but a dead man.’
‘Really? That would be most unfortunate.’
Blinking at him, Sabina finally recovered herself. This was no ghost or vision, but a real man, the man she had once thought the embodiment of her girlhood dreams. Yet he had broken all vows and abandoned all honour, and now he had set Urban to spy upon her? ‘Why are you here, Julian? What do you want?’
‘I would think that’s a bit obvious, Sabina, but then you were never one to think the worst of people, were you? Trusting little Sabina. Naïve. Honest to a fault. Full of righteous goodness.’ He moved close to her and reached out to lift her chin with one long finger, which Sabina slapped away.
Far from offending him, the action seemed to please the man Julian had become. ‘At first I just wanted to get rid of everyone, but you proved far too stubborn. Foolish, stubborn Sabina, clinging to her visions of honourable knights and worthy wars. But then I began to think you might be useful.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Sabina asked, her heart in her throat. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Why, that I am The Dragon.’ Julian threw the words over his shoulder as he resumed his pacing. ‘Since you refused to let me dig into the mound after I asked you so nicely, I had to find some way to have it to myself. And it was a clever scheme, you must admit, even though you refused to go. When you would not leave, I thought perhaps it was fate, throwing us together again. I began to think we might resume our relationship, after I had found the riches, of course, and became worthy of you.’
‘What?’ Sabina surged to her feet. ‘You think that wealth would make you worthy? You come in here, acting as if you’ve done nothing wrong, when you attacked my village, scattered my people and killed my father?’
‘I didn’t kill your—’
‘You killed my father!’ Sabina screamed. She saw the alarm on Julian’s face, but she couldn’t stop. Her heart pounded, yet with anger, not fear. ‘And then you think you can marry me, take to your bed and your life the woman you most wronged in the world? What sort of a monster are you? You are most assuredly a worm, but the kind that crawls upon the ground and slithers through faeces, hiding in the dirt.’
The words had barely left Sabina’s mouth when she heard a faint sound, as though of the beast itself, yet it came from the skies outside, not from the man standing before her. ‘If you are The Dragon, then what is that?’ she asked, eyes narrowed.
Julian cocked his head to one side. ‘It appears that I am needed elsewhere. But, first, tell me where the treasure is,’ he said, advancing on her.
‘There is no treasure,’ Sabina shouted. For a moment, all was quiet as she stood facing him, and then she heard a knock upon her door.
Turning, Sabina hastened with the bolt, for fear Julian might prevent her from escaping. But it swung open, revealing young Peregrine, with his sword drawn. Fearing for the boy, Sabina was reluctant to let him in, yet when she turned, the room was empty.
Julian had disappeared, just as surely as the last time he had been here.
Reynold put the bones and all else back into the square hole that marked the very bottom of the mound and was filling it in with the different-coloured soil when he heard something eerily familiar. It was not the sound of flying fire, but that of the dragon’s roar none the less, and Reynold climbed out of the pit as quickly as possible, a wary eye upon the skies.
‘Did you see anything?’ Reynold asked Alec, the only other person left at the mound.
The boy shook his head; loathe to leave him alone, Reynold took him along as they hurried to the manor. Even though he knew no worm hovered above them, Reynold crouched low to the ground as he ran, keeping to the tall grass as much as possible before racing to the copse of trees at the rear of the building.
There they halted beneath the cloaking greenery, Reynold holding up a hand to silence Alec. Although he expected no trouble, in the past days and weeks Reynold had grown lax, and now he cursed himself for sending the women back to the hall without his protection.
His glance through the leaves was one of caution only, an automatic gesture, so he bit back a grunt of surprise when he saw a dark figure climbing down the side of the stone structure. As Reynold gaped, the figure turned, revealing itself to be a man, slender and agile, with a face so handsome as to bring Reynold’s brother Stephen to mind.
Reynold’s initial fear that a passing thief had attacked the last of the villagers turned into something else entirely, especially since the man was coming from above—where Mistress Sexton’s window lay.
‘That looks like Julian Fabre, the blacksmith’s son,’ Alec whispered. He turned to Reynold, his eyes wide. ‘Mistress Sexton’s betrothed.’
The hushed words rang in Reynold’s head like a shout, and he reeled as though the boy had struck him. The pain that lanced through him was far worse than any ache in his leg, and he could hardly bring himself to speak, lest he howl his anguish to the skies. ‘You go inside,’ he managed to whisper. ‘I’m going to follow him.’
Reynold had no idea what the figure was up to, but he was not about to allow the man Mistress Sexton had claimed was dead wander in and out of Grim’s End at will. Were the two of them lovers? Reynold’s hurt was joined by anger and frustration, and he felt a fool to have thought Mistress Sexton different. He wondered just how far her deceit went, but he could spare no thoughts for her perfidy now when he needed all his wits about him.
With a bitter twist of his mouth, he acknowledged his fate: to be betrayed by the woman he loved.
Chapter Fifteen
S abina hurried down the stairs, Peregrine close behind her. Although she wanted to hide in her bedchamber, it was no longer a haven. Indeed, the only place where Sabina felt secure now was with Lord de Burgh. By his side. In his arms. But as she rushed to the hall, anger, fear and worry for him dogged her footsteps. What if Julian came upon Lord de Burgh in the pit and buried him, for good this time…? Sabina stopped at the bottom of the steps, her breath lodged in her throat.
‘Are you all right?’ Ursula asked, her own face pale and drawn. ‘We heard the dragon’s roar and didn’t know what to do. What happened?’
Sabina shook her head as she tried to breath. Not now, she thought, desperately. Not when Lord de Burgh might be in danger. She focused on him, on his tall form and his beloved face, while she grasped Ursula’s arm.
‘Julian. Julian was in my room,’ she finally managed. ‘Julian Fabre.’<
br />
‘What?’ Ursula’s voice rang with shock, and Sabina could hear Adele’s gasp.
‘But I thought he was dead,’ Adele said, an expression of terror on her face. ‘Was it his remains that were disturbed in the mound?’
‘No, he is no ghost,’ Sabina said. ‘He is alive and well.’ Too well. She paused to draw a deep breath as Alec raced into the hall.
‘Did you see Julian?’ the boy asked, his eyes wide.
Even as Sabina nodded, she looked past the boy for a familiar figure, but Alec was alone. ‘Where is Lord de Burgh?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were with him.’
‘Lord de Burgh went after Julian,’ Alec said. ‘We saw him sneaking from the manor, and Lord de Burgh set out to follow him.’
Sabina felt her heart contract with fear. Although she had faith in Lord de Burgh, in his skill and his strength, Julian held to no knightly code. He was dangerous and devious. And what if he were not alone?
‘Come, sit down,’ Peregrine said, as if divining her thoughts. Taking her arm, he led her to her chair and Sabina sank into it, while Peregrine gathered the remaining residents of Grim’s End around the trestle table.
‘For the moment, let us all stay here, for I don’t think Lord de Burgh would want us to separate. If need be, we can go to the cellars or the roofs—’
Ursula interrupted him with a gasp. ‘Are you saying we will be attacked?’
Peregrine shook his head, and his calm authority was so like his master’s that Sabina felt her tension ease.
‘No, but I would have us be prepared, so please follow my direction, if necessary. For now, we will await Lord de Burgh’s return, and perhaps you can tell me what I need to know about our enemy.’
Reynold de Burgh: The Dark Knight Page 19